The head of PC maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, has hit out at Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, saying that the 'entire industry' was disappointed by it. Few buyers have purchased new PCs specifically for Vista, Acer's chief says "The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista," the head of the world's fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday. Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales, he said. "And that's not going to change in the second half of this year," Mr Lanci said. "I really don't think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista."

Sure, it can't do everything (playback of ripped DVD images come to mind, or maybe it can and I just don't know it), but it's very functional.

I don't know about Vista, but if it's like XP's Media Center, then it can play DVD file folders. So if you convert your DVD image file to the equivalent DVD folder, you can play it from the harddrive. Just make sure that the DVD folders are within the file hierarchy of a directlry that you have set as one of Media Center's "Video" directories. Then when you navigate for "Videos", go to the DVD folder and click it as if you were about to open it - the DVD begins playing.